Not even last week's exclusive interview with Pope Francis was enough to save the chair of the Director of Sun 24 hours, Guido Gentili, which had been wobbling for some time, as FIRSTonline had punctually reported. Today the board of directors of the economic journal of Confindustria, chaired by Edoardo Garrone, replaced him immediately by calling the management Fabio Tamburini, until a few hours ago deputy director of theHandle with responsibility for the economy. Tamburini, in addition to managing the economic newspaper, will also be director of Radio 24 and of the Radiocor agency. Gentili remains editorial director of the group
A Gentili, who had been recalled in the middle of last year to the direction of Sun 24 Hours in place of Robert Neapolitan, on which as on you are manager of the Sun the Milan prosecutor's office must pronounce ad horas on the hypothesized crimes of false accounting and market manipulation and deciding whether to close the case or refer everyone to trial, the drop in copies sold at newsstands was fatal, which significantly lowered the group's revenues, once again jeopardizing the balance of its accounts . In the latest survey made known by Prima communication a few days ago and relating to total circulation (print plus digital), the figure for July 2018 (169.712) was down by 5,47% compared to that for June 2018 (160.426). At an annual level, compared to July 2017, the decrease is 3,9%.
Taking into consideration only the paper newspaper, in July 2018 the sales at newsstands of the Sole fell by 10,8% compared to the same month of the previous year, going from 50.591 to 45.125 and being overtaken by regional newspapers such as il Resto del Carlino or the nation. An abyss compared to the circulation record held by Il Sole twenty years ago when it was the leading economic newspaper in Europe ahead of the Financial Times despite the language handicap, with an average circulation of 430 copies a day between newsstand sales and subscriptions.
Now we will try to get back on track under the guidance of Fabio Tamburini: for him it is a homecoming. Former finance correspondent of Sun in the early nineties and then director of the agency Radiocor need radio 24, Tamburini is a long-time economic journalist who perfectly knows the strengths and weaknesses of the Confindustria publishing group which he will try to relaunch immediately. And it will probably do so by rediscovering the true identity of Il Sole as an economic and financial journal and by abandoning the pretensions of making it a generalist journal which have only caused disappointment and loss of copies.
